


A Tree with Strong Roots

by HSavinien



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, Foursome - F/M/M/M, Friendship/Love, Math and Science Metaphors, Multi, Post-Canon, Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27943046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HSavinien/pseuds/HSavinien
Summary: The Them, home on summer holiday, stop at one of their old hangouts and spend some time together. Wensleydale feels philosophical about maths.
Relationships: Brian/Pepper/Wensleydale/Adam Young (Good Omens)
Kudos: 2
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Exchange 2020





	A Tree with Strong Roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunatique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunatique/gifts).



> Happy holidays, lunatique! Beta thanks to kittydorkling. The title comes from a proverb: “A tree with strong roots laughs at storms.”

Above the quarry, the Them have The Tree. There’s always The Tree. There inevitably is for any group of kids let loose to run around outside and entertain themselves. 

> _ Sometimes it's not a tree. It's a saguaro or a big rock or a light pole or a cave or even a specific chunk of concrete. But nearly always it's a tree, if there's one available. Humans are Like That. _

It's not a fruit tree. Apple would be too trite. Figs and pomegranates don't grow in England, usually, and it's important that it's a Wild Tree. It's a low-sprawling oak with a double top, ancient and oddly shaped and interestingly knotty. Birds and squirrels nest in it and have loud territorial disputes over the best holes and forks.

Adam gets a black eye when he fails to duck a low branch during tag, and Wensley misses a week of school with an arm broken falling out of it, and Pepper shreds her palms and her jeans trying to slide down it like a firefighter's pole, and Brian drops off a branch headfirst while hanging by his knees and his nose bleeds all down his front and Wensley's sleeve. They play pirate ship in The Tree and make gorilla nests to try to sleep in the boughs. They swordfight with fallen sticks and smush their faces into the trunk to see the patterns it leaves lined in their skin. Dog chews a chunk of bark off one side when he’s young and looks adorably dejected when he’s scolded for it. They build the most giant leaf pile In The World to jump in with its drifts of brown leaves, and bury Dog and Pepper’s little sister (who falls asleep and nearly gets forgotten).

When they are eleven, Wensleydale and Pepper use sticks from The Tree to make a pair of scales and a sword. And, leaning against the trunk, making plans and growing angry, Adam almost glows from within, with a light that hurts when it touches, and leaves a patch of bark scarred like lightning’s hit it.

The world doesn’t end and The Tree is still there.

They grow. The Tree does too, leafing and spreading its pollen on the wind to explore new places and pollinate interesting new friends, dropping acorns in season, hosting new generations of birds and squirrels.

The Them leave, for shorter and longer times.

* * *

The Tree loses a limb in a spring storm when they’re away at uni and, coming back, Adam gapes at the hole in the canopy like its a finger missing from his own hand.

“Things are allowed to change,” Wensleydale says quietly, flipping his ballpoint pen between his fingers. It’s a nice pen, an expensive one that his aunt sent him for his birthday; it’s solid between his fingers and the ink never sputters. 

“I know,” Adam says quickly. “Of course.”

Brian tackles him from behind and sends them both into the moss at the base of the tree, Adam’s roll the only thing that saves both their heads from cracking into a knobby root. Brian, unconcerned, sprawls across his torso with their legs tangling, ignoring Adam’s breathless claims he’s being squashed, and lectures him in detail about all the new things that will be eating or building homes in the rotting remains of the old branch. There are several varieties of beetle involved.

Pepper climbs up on a branch above them to look out over their old play spots, and presses her fingers into the bark until it marks her skin. Wensley settles with his back against the tree, watches a stray lock of her hair float in the breeze, listens to Brian, and pets his fingertips down the line of skin between Adam’s ear and shirt collar.

“Bring some leaves down with you,” Wensley calls up to her after a moment.

“What if I was planning to stay?” she asks, returning from whatever thoughts had drifted her away from Them.

“Throw some down, then, and I’ll bring you a sleeping bag from the car before we leave you there.” 

“Mean,” Pepper complains. She stands to reach them anyway.

“That would be fun,” Adam says thoughtfully.

“What, sleeping in The Tree? Didn’t work so well the last time,” Wensley points out. Gorillas must be better at building nests than children.

“No, sleeping here. Under The Tree,” Brian says, picking up Adam’s thread. “There’s the sleeping bags, we’ve got my camp kit and ready-meals for supper.” They were going on a post-term camping holiday after the visit home. They're astonishingly well prepared, considering that Adam had pulled off the road on a whim. 

“Nobody’s expecting us back today anyhow,” Adam says. “If you hadn’t sat your last exam early, Wensley, we’d still be away another two days. Why not spend the night out here? The weather should be good.”

It will be, now he’s said it. Wensleydale’s known for years that’s how weather works around Adam. 

Brian smacks a kiss to Adam’s mouth, loud and obnoxious to make him laugh, and rolls off him, heading toward Adam’s bucket of a Nissan for the gear. Pepper jumps back to earth with a handful of leaves for Wensley and offers a hand to Adam, who pulls her down instead of using it to get up. 

Pepper groans and elbows him in the shoulder, then settles on his other side. She buries her fingers in the moss and sighs. “It feels like it’s been ages since we’ve been here, but it also feels like it hasn’t been nearly any time at all. Are you being weird again?”

“Not so far as I know,” Adam mumbles, shifting so he can rest his head in Wensley’s lap and his knees across hers. Wensley starts placing the leaves just so in Adam’s hair, threading green into gold until they fan up around his head like a crown.

Brian comes tromping back with the sleeping bags tied together and slung over his shoulders like saddlebags and the camping box clutched in both hands.

“Pepper, you want to make a fire?” Adam asks.

“Not ‘til closer to dusk. There’s not much dry wood about.” She levers herself upright to unload Brian, setting up the little campstove and passing out water bottles. The two of them spend about ten minutes zipping all the sleeping bags together into one giant Frankenbag and clearing the rocks and sticks from a patch of ground to lay it out over the blue tarpaulin.

“Didn’t bother with the tent,” Brian says, sprawling next to Adam and Wensley.

“Good,” Pepper declares. “If Adam says it won’t rain, I’d rather have the tree for cover.”

“Hippie,” Wensley teases.

“Ugh, I can’t help it. Some things are genetic, I guess. One night of inadvisable camping won’t kill me. At least we know there aren’t goats around here.” She leans on him and tweaks a couple of leaves out of his pile, weaving the stem of one into her own braid and sticking the other behind Wensley’s ear. He nips at her fingers, his hands still in Adam's hair. Pepper flicks his ear. Brian makes grabby hands at her last leaf and she drops it on his face. 

> _ Jeremy Allan Wensleydale, three marked exams away from his BSc and the glorious reliability of chartered accountancy, is not a poetic man, but he is good at sums, even the ones that aren’t rooted in logic. _
> 
> _ The Tree is an irrational space, which becomes a ship, or castle, or monkey habitat at will. Irrational things are still real. They are still important. _
> 
> _ Under The Tree, irrational numbers have a place, even though they can’t be defined. None of the other Them have ever been easily, properly calculable. Adam is phi, the golden ratio, something in his bones woven with the patterns of the universe. Brian is simpler, the square root of two, which should be easy and pin-downable, but isn’t. An even-keeled thing going off on an adventure with no end in sight. Pepper is pi, beloved and essential and defying all attempts to make her into something that can be measured. Three irrational numbers and an integer (he’s always fancied four, a very sturdy, reliable number) can’t be added to make something logical. _
> 
> _ But things don’t have to be logical to happen. He knows that as well as anyone in the world. They can figure each other out close enough to work. _

He leans down, foregoing breathing to kiss Adam instead, their mouths sideways on each other, but so amazingly right he could die of it. Brian whistles, loud and appreciative, too close, and Pepper shuts him up by clapping her hand over his mouth. Wensley’s cheeks burn. Adam grins up at him and curls his hand over the back of Wensley’s neck, rubbing the strain away and licking his lips. 

Pepper makes a startled sound, then Brian says, “Yuck!” and Wensley and Adam break apart to see Pepper laughing at him. 

“Her fingers taste of tree and moss,” he complains, wiping his mouth. “I’m calling anti-dibs on them anywhere inside me until you’ve had a wash.”

“Brian, you are the most frequently dirt-covered person I’ve ever kissed,” Wensleydale points out. “Glass houses.”

“I wash up before we have it off though,” Brian protests.

“Nobody asked you to put your tongue on my fingers,” Pepper says loftily.

“They were on my mouth,” he says, waving his hands in outrage. “Things on my mouth are already basically in it. Why would you-” Pepper cuts him off with a kiss and he subsides into pleased noises for a moment. As soon as she lets him up for air, he adds, “Everyone’s having a wash before we do anything more than kissing though, or I’m telling you all about noroviruses in detail.”

Adam laughs, rolling onto his side and stretching in the way he does that makes them all twitchy with lust (they’ve discussed it loudly and at length, while Adam protests that it isn’t anything he does on purpose; it’s  _ vastly _ unfair). “You got a washbasin and soap in your camping kit?”

“Yes, I do.” Brian is a wonderful person and Wensleydale appreciates his forethought. 

Washing is a shambles of splashing and shoving, but the Them do get properly clean before Pepper trips Brian and flops beside him on the sleeping bag pile, pulling Adam down with her. Wensley follows, pulling off his shirt, which had gotten the wettest of all their things. Brian’s damp handprints make his skin prickle in the breath of a breeze that shivers the leaves above them. His friends grin up at him and take his hands, then they’re all piled together cuddling him to take away the goosebumps, lusty, laughing and shedding leaves.

> _ The math goes like this: 1+1+1+1=4.  _
> 
> _ 1 and 4 are the first nonprime numbers, the first that are combinations together. Wensleydale finds this unaccountably comforting. _

Beneath The Tree, The Them have each other, the green-gold sunlight flickering over their joy.


End file.
